A Window in Marseile
This was posted in the window of a graphic design studio in Marseille.
Love it.

Everyone’s heard about the tunnels underneath Chinatown. Guidebooks tell us they are there; newspapers, books and movies have confirmed their existence. So where are they? In this presentation John Atkin looks at the origin of the tunnel myth, from early San Francisco tour guide’s stories and “eyewitness” accounts, to the tunnels as a side show attraction and early film. He will look at why the myth persists even today.

More info on the Historical Society here.

I’m up on February 21st, at 7pm.

Here’s the blub:

Join author and civic historian John Atkin at Hycroft for “It’s All About the Light” a talk about neon, lighting, and the city. Timed to coincide with the MOV’s Neon Vancouver | Ugly Vancouver exhibition, Atkin sheds light on the invention and science of neon and Vancouver’s extraordinary love affair with this light source. From its peak in the 1950s, Atkin traces the reasons and implications of neon’s decline across North America and looks at the recent renaissance of lighting in urban design.

Here’s more information and the registration link.

The Sing Kew Theatre in 1898. The theatre visited by Major Matthews was not in Shanghai Alley as imagined. It moved in the early 1900s.

My first visit to the Chinese Theatre in Chinatown, Vancouver, was in the winter of 1898.

Precisely how we got to it I cannot tell. We turned off Hastings Street and went south on Carrall Street. Then, at some point, we turned into an alley between old wooden buildings. There were no lights. It was pitch dark and raining. The wooden planks on which we walked were wet. None of the nearby buildings were painted and appeared as black silhouettes. We turned one or two corners upon which, above our heads three or five feet, a single eight candle power electric carbon bulb glowed in the encircling gloom. Where we were going I did not know, but my guide kept on going—I followed. We passed shadows of men going out—some overtook us going in. There was nothing startling, nothing to be alarmed at. It was simply a poorly lighted entrance. One might compare it with going with a lantern to the woodshed or the barn.

We paid a small entrance fee—ten cents, or perhaps as high as a quarter, certainly no more. Inside we climbed an equally ill lighted stairway of wood, carpetless, unpainted, and in the gloom seemingly begrimed with tobacco smoke. We found ourselves in a balcony overlooking the “pit” below, and the stage beyond. In the balcony we sat on backless benches. Drably dressed Chinamen were sitting, loosely grouped, on every bench. It was not crowded and every now and again one would come in and one would go out. There seemed no special moment of entrance or departure. All wore their pigtails. All wore dark collarless coats fastened with knots, not buttons. Below, in the pit, were a similarly conducted audience, not by any means crowded. It seemed that the Chinese theatre-goers came and went as they wished. There were no ushers—the audience merely stayed and departed at their own will.

The stage was oblong as all stages. A number of actors were walking about it, others were sitting. Some musicians were beating or banging instruments we did not recognise. Some seemed to be brass pans; others, wooden pillars on which the musicians beat with sticks. It was an “awful racket.” I asked my Chinese guide if he liked Chinese music or European music best, and he replied that he liked one as well as the other—it was what one was accustomed to. We watched the actors in their coloured (looked like silk) gowns strut about, and, to our ears, jabber their lines. What the play was about we did not know. Actors came in, others went out, and the chatter sounded like endless gobble-gobble-gobble. After an hour or more, the play apparently proceeding as merrily as ever, we left quietly. We were told the play would go on for months—the same play. The Chinese audiences seemed deeply interested and attentive, but to those accustomed to the Vancouver Opera House, it was about as gloomy, ill-lighted, and dreary a den as could be imagined.

J.S. Matthews, 4 December 1947
Major James Skitt Matthews, Early Vancouver, Vol. 7 (Vancouver: City of Vancouver, 2011), pg 329

The above statement is incorrect. Shanghai Alley did not exist in 1890 and Canton Alley was not built until 1903. I don’t know where the statement originates from, though a version of it is on the interpretive panels at the southern end of Shanghai Alley, and is repeated on many web sites including the UBC Library’s Chinese in BC site.

A search of relevant works on Chinatown’s history finds that the alley is rarely mentioned; Paul Yee’s Saltwater City makes no reference to the alley except to note the damage done in the 1907 riot; Kay Anderson’s extensive writing on Chinatown mentions the alley only in passing when discussing the problem of prostitution migrating to it; Quene Yip’s booklet for the City’s Jubilee in 1936 makes no special mention of the alley; and Major Matthew’s seven volumes of collected notes make only a passing reference to the alley.

Unfortunately, in recent years various well meaning efforts have elevated Shanghai Alley to an importance it did not have during its active life.

Some history.

In 1887, a local newspaper noted the establishment of a “China-town” at the south end of Carrall Street at Dupont Street near the edge of False Creek. As the community grew it expanded east on Dupont Street (today’s Pender) from Carrall to Westminster Avenue (today’s Main Street). Along the creek’s edge on Carrall a number of temporary cabins and crude tenements served a variety of men working at the nearby Royal City sawmill.

The 1891 directory for example, list the following residents and businesses on Carrall Street:

East side:
516 Opera Resort saloon (at the corner of Pender and Carrall), John Sparrow, proprietor
518 occupied
526 vacant
532 Mrs. Legrand
Mrs. Mary Novis
534 Central Wood and Coal yard, John McDowell prop
538 vacant
540 Jim Kee laundry
Vacant cabin
542 stable
550 James Woodworth & Co.
556 vacant
558 vacant
566 Royal City Planing Mills Co.

West side:
Nothing listed. This matches information found on fire insurance maps.

The same 1891 directory listing for Dupont Street shows the extent of the early Chinese district between Carrall and Main Street. Sixteen Chinese businesses could be found on the north side of the street and thirty one on the south side.

In 1900, the health inspector counted 1500 men living on Dupont Street, by the time the count was conducted in 1901, the Dupont Street population had jumped to over 2000 men along with 27 women and 26 children.

In the same period the site of Shanghai Alley was occupied by a machine and moulding shop belonging to the Ross and Howard Foundry and an ice house belonging to the Cleeve Canning and Cold Storage Company. Development on the west side of Carrall Street dates from 1900 with buildings at the corner of Dupont Street for the Sam Kee Company followed by a three lot development to the south in 1901. The Chinese Reform Association built their new building in 1903 next door which was followed by a 1904 structure at the end of the street.

The development of Shanghai Alley dates from the construction of the Wing Sang Company’s huge five building Canton Alley tenement in 1903/4 which established the western edge of Shanghai Alley. Building owners on Carrall Street then extended their buildings to provide a frontage on the alley beginning in 1904. The street appears in city directories for the first time in 1905.

The 1905 Chinese business directory section of Henderson’s Directory lists just one business on Shanghai Alley, though a small number of businesses are listed on Canton Alley. By 1907 there were only six businesses listed on the alley and the compensation report for damages resulting from the riot of the same year list the same six businesses as receiving money.

So Shanghai Alley is a late development in Chinatown and certainly not the birthplace it is portrayed to be.

Early Development of Shanghai Alley

The Sing Kew Theatre is often referenced to support the early existence of the alley and has been noted as being in Shanghai Alley as early as 1898 – in 1947 the city’s archivist recalled a visit to a theatre in Chinatown at this time though he doesn’t give a location but it is taken as the Sing Kew. But evidence doesn’t support the original Sing Kew theatre being in the alley since its location was occupied by the Ross and Howard foundry buildings. A glance at the 1897 fire insurance map shows a “Chinese Theatre” on the edge of False Creek behind a tenement building. It’s a two storey building which would fit Matthew’s brief description and is probably the original Sing Kew before it moved into Shanghai Alley as the creek edge was redeveloped. A 1907 photo of Shanghai Alley shows a sign indicating an upstairs theatre in a building that was constructed in 1904.

Building permits show W.H. Chow working on alterations to a building at 5441/2 noted as the address of the Sing Kew theatre in 1904 and again in 1914 when significant renovations were carried out. Plans exist in the Vancouver Archives.

Milan-based architecture studio Stefano Boeri‘s Vertical Forest is a residential building duo named Bosco Verticale that can be seen in construction in the metropolitan center of Milan, Italy. This exciting green residential project was meant for growing forests in the sky and allowing residents and neighbors to enjoy fresh outdoor air. Bosco Verticale adds green space in an over-industrialized busy city, challenging future metropolis to offer its inhabitants a safe, healthy environment. Biodiversity in urban spaces will not be a problem once more projects like this will appear in the urban landscape.

Vancouver Drug Company and the Vancouver Tea and Coffee Company on Carrall Street

I’ve always been curious about this little building on Carrall Street. I’m writing the text for the Heritage Foundation’s Places that Matter plaques (with Michael Kluckner) and this is one of the selected locations.

It’s been interesting to dig into the history and sort it out since the official Statement of Significance for the Louvre is quite wrong.

Here’s my version.

This somewhat anonymous building in the 300 block of Carrall street has been the home of the Gospel Mission since the 1940s. The Gospel Mission in operation in Vancouver since 1929 is one of the oldest missions in the city.

The Gospel Mission occupies a building built in 1889, its first tenants at street level were the Vancouver Drug Company run by Dr. James Rolls and the Vancouver Tea and Coffee Company whose manager is listed as W.A. Cumyow.

Won Alexander Cumyow was the first Chinese born in Canada in Port Douglas at the head of Harrision Lake. He was secretary of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association when it was founded in Victoria in 1884 and later its president in Vancouver. Cumyow would later become a court interpreter for the Vancouver Police and while in Vancouver he helped form the Chinese Empire Reform Association to promote the modernization of the Chinese monarchy. He worked in a variety of businesses including real estate and retail.

The Tea and Coffee company moved out and was replaced by a Robertson’s Men’s Furnishings, Hats and Caps. In 1891 Arthur Haines opened his real estate office next to the drug company and took rooms upstairs. Haines would remain in the building for the next six years. In 1896 the Brown Jug Saloon replaces the drug company and is renamed the Louvre the following year when Reinhold Minaty moves over from the Old Fountain Saloon on Cordova Street. Minaty advertised the Louvre as having the only circular bar in the province and suggested customers “call in and lubricate”.

The wall in the lane (once known as Louvre Alley) still features painted signs for the saloon and advertises clean beds for 20 cents a night at the Boston Rooms a few doors down the lane.

The rooms above the store fronts seemed to be operated as a rooming house until 1898 when they are listed as the Louvre Hotel. Fire insurance maps of the period show the hotel had six fireplaces when it was built.

On the ground floor a variety of businesses including cafes, confectionary stores, barber shops and tailors come and go over the years.

In 1940, the old Bijou Theatre next door to the hotel was torn down and, for some reason, included the demolition of a section of the Louvre Hotel that faced onto the CPR right-of-way at Carrall. It’s at this point the hotel disappears from the directories and when the Gospel Mission moves in.